All In The Family
by Slytherite
Summary: Incest is surprisingly common among the Wizarding aristocracy--you might even call it a family tradition. Just a little romantic piece. Main pairing Rodolphus/Rabastan, with implied RodolphusxBellatrix and VoldemortxBellatrix. One-shot. Mild lime.


Disclaimer: I own nothing in this story, except the old mahogany table. Rabastan decided he didn't like it and sold it on eBay. No, I don't know how he got onto eBay, being a wizard and whatnot.  
A/N: I wrote this to get rid of a particularly persistent case of writer's block. It worked. Also, I had to put an ice pack on my throat and press HARD to write the passage where Bellatrix uses some sort of magical strangulation spell, so never say I don't suffer for my art.

October 20, 1970

They ate earlier than normal that night, in the ground-floor parlor instead of the dining room. Bellatrix had some "business" she needed to take care of, and she had made it very plain that whatever she was doing didn't include Rodolphus and Rabastan. They accepted that. Not happily, but they accepted it. As a rule, no one argued with Bellatrix. That was the way it was. Rabastan took orders from Rodolphus, who took them from Bellatrix, who took them from the Dark Lord, who, presumably, took them from nobody. That was the way pureblood society was structured, the way that the family worked. You didn't question things like that.

"So, what, exactly are you doing tonight, Bellatrix?" Rabastan's high, feminine voice echoed around the parlor, overlapping itself, every quaver and subtle flicker of meaning in his words magnified hundreds of times. Bellatrix's lip curled.  
"That's not your business. The Dark Lord asked me to come alone, he promised--" She broke off awkwardly, glaring at Rabastan. Rodolphus didn't appear to have heard her last words, stroking her shoulder absently, his dark brown eyes fixed on something the other two couldn't see. Rabastan smirked, pressing his advantage, his mismatched green and hazel eyes (the products of generations of careful inbreeding) flickering from his brother to his sister-in-law. He couldn't take it too far, of course, or her revenge might be painful, but just one little venomous comment probably wouldn't do too much harm, especially if she didn't notice the sarcasm, which she often didn't. A little taste of her own medicine, to keep her from lording her power over him too much, and to keep him from going insane with frustration. Like the herbs on the fish, which incidentally Spinky the house-elf had overcooked a bit--a nice little seasoning on the younger brother's pathetic lot.  
"Chocolates?" Her eyes blazed as she whipped her wand out of her pocket. He dived under the table just in time, the sturdy mahogany shielding him from the first blast. It wouldn't have been fatal, of course (he hoped), Bellatrix wouldn't have dared hurt him TOO badly, but on the whole, something better avoided.  
She was off the chair and on hands and knees under the table in an instant, pointing her wand at Rabastan's throat, smiling hideously, her black hair slipping out of its elegant updo and over her pretty face. He tried to crawl away backwards but reached the legs of his armchair almost immediately, flinging his hands up over his face in a desperate plan B.  
The spell struck seconds later, a wave of coldness engulfing him, crushing his throat like a chilled iron collar, pulling tighter and tighter, pressing against the bone, darkness flickering at the corners of his vision, a horrible tugging sensation behind his eyes and a feeling of intense heat spreading across his face, his mind swirling, disorganized, around the incredible pain...and then it released. He slumped to the floor like a horror-story doll, his head lolling onto his shoulder, his eyes struggling to focus, a bruise forming where the spell had been strongest. Rodolphus sipped his wine, paying no attention to the fight underneath the table after a cursory glance had confirmed that Rabastan had survived the spell. Rabastan made a mental note to tell him to exercise some authority as Bellatrix's husband. It was his duty, or something like it, to keep his brother from being routinely beaten up. He was as apathetic as hell, a failure as a husband and a brother...Perhaps he knew what Rabastan was thinking, somehow, as he spoke for the first time that night.  
"Bella, leave him alone." Rolling her eyes, Bellatrix gave Rabastan one more jolt for good measure and stood up, brushing the dust off her robes. She was already wearing her Death Eater robes, black and unadorned, and she pulled her jet-black mask out of her pocket and put it on, obscuring her face completely.  
"As you wish, Roddy dear." Rabastan heard the sarcasm in her voice, but he wasn't sure that Rodolphus did.

The door slammed shut behind her, knocking some dust off of the ancient doorframe. The house-elf was being an idiot again, obviously. The candles were all lit when four would have sufficed, a table Rabastan had never seen before in seventeen years had been dragged in to eat dinner off when the coffee table would have been perfectly fine, and the piano was playing something by Beethoven even though no guests were expected. Spinky meant well, of course, but she was young, stupid, and didn't know what she was doing and what was expected of her--rather like Rodolphus, actually. They were two of a kind.  
"Sorry about that. I should have stopped her earlier." To Rabastan's mild surprise, Rodolphus gave the armchair a rough shove out of the way and gently but firmly helped him to his feet. It had been a while since they had touched each other, longer still since they had done so deliberately or for more than a few seconds. It was an odd feeling, awkward, as if someone would walk in on them any second and be disgusted by the display of brotherly intimacy, but at the same time a little exciting and strange.  
"It's all right." Unexpectedly, his mind twisted and turned giddy, and his legs gave way. Rodolphus caught him before he hit the ground, his handsome face a little concerned.  
"She hit you pretty hard." Rabastan shuddered at the memory, still recent enough to be terrifying. Then another part of his disorganized mind returned to normality, and he realized Rodolphus was holding him in his arms like a bride overcome with emotion or a sleeping child, a strangely intimate gesture, like something you might do for a lover. It was embarrassing to be so helpless, but he made no move to get away.  
"I said, it's all right!" His voice came out sounding cold and angry, which hadn't been his intention in the slightest. Something in his mind was still trying to resolve itself--why DID this feel so...weird? It was perfectly normal, after all, if some crazy girl put a jinx on Rodolphus he'd want to make sure he was all right. It was the sort of thing brothers did for each other.  
"Okay then. It's all right." Rodolphus, a little offended, put Rabastan down on the worn red sofa a little less gently than he could have. Rabastan's disturbingly pale skin made a nice contrast to the red silk, actually. Rodolphus found himself focusing on the details of his brother's appearance, for no particular reason that he could think of; Rabastan looked beautiful, girlishly so, his impractically long chestnut hair and his lithe, slender body making him an easy target for Bellatrix's frequent teasing. He tended to cry when Bellatrix called him a pansy. That was why she did it, actually. But he was a beautiful boy, seventeen years old, just out of Hogwarts, intelligent and cultured and just a little annoying.  
For his part, Rabastan couldn't help but notice that Rodolphus really was rather handsome, although he wasn't particularly sure why this had just popped into his mind. His eyes weren't just dull, uninteresting brown, they were almost the same shade of mahogany as the table, and just as lively and intelligent. His hair and beard were the same color, flecked with lighter brown, razor-straight and a little unkempt, just enough to make him look casual and uninterested in appearances without looking too terribly uncivilized. Several of the buttons of his dark red robes were undone, although Rabastan suspected he had forgotten to button them in the first place.  
For no apparent reason, conversation seemed a little more difficult after that point, awkward in a way it had never been before. Uncomfortable, almost. "So...er...why, exactly, didn't you stop Bellatrix?" Rodolphus looked uncomfortable, not quite meeting his gaze.  
"I figured you'd be all right. She's really not that bad. She just gets...carried away." Wordlessly, Rabastan touched the bruise on his throat. Rodolphus laughed humorlessly, the lie in his words obvious to both of them. "She likes you, actually. Kind of like a pet." The words stung. Of course he was her pet, her cute little prettyboy, that was all he ever would be in this house. "Really. And here I was, thinking that YOU were her pet." Rodolphus sighed.  
"You don't understand love, marriage, all that. When you're a little older, maybe." Something snapped. Rabastan whipped off the couch, his eyes blazing, his breathing quick and uneven.  
"You think twenty is any better than seventeen? You think you understand this any more than I do? Will I get the book that explains everything when I marry, or will voices ring out from the heavens and tell me all I need to know? Well, I'm not going to marry, look how miserable it makes both of you, so you can save time and explain things right now? What is it about love that I don't understand?" They stared at each other, Rabastan furious, Rodolphus defensive, their family resemblance more evident than usual.

Maybe a little sliver of time was cut out of the universe. It felt like it for both of them. Rodolphus hadn't bothered to close his eyes, which might have disturbed Rabastan somewhat had he known (his own eyes were firmly closed). Neither of them was a particularly good kisser, truth be told, and yet the heat--the inferno--of mutual incestuous desire and--though neither of them had realized this--love was more than satisfactory. They were locked incredibly closely, Rabastan's ribs threatening to snap like fine china and the bruise on his throat throbbing. There was no room in the moment for apathy, bitterness, for other loves, for resentment or anger, nor did either man remember that such things existed. Rabastan, who had never kissed anyone before, compared the experience in his mind, favorably, to the overenthusiastically purple descriptions in the novels he had read. Rodolphus, who had kissed only the monumentally disinterested Bellatrix, had read no such novels, but if asked and given an opportunity to answer without the impediment of Rabastan's tongue, might have said that it lived up to the half-remembered feverish mythology of fourteen-year-old boys. It felt like a tragedy when they had to let go in order to breathe. "You taste like..." Rodolphus paused, trying to think of exactly what.  
"Really?" Rabastan's eyes lit up.  
"Blood. Yeah. Blood." They dived back into the kiss with a passion, Rodolphus fumbling with the buttons of his brother's robes. They didn't stop for a long, long time, as the piano plunked out its Beethoven and the candles cast a warm, loving light over the entire scene.

When Bellatrix came back, well into the night, her robes fastened rather hastily and her hair disheveled from the Dark Lord's attentions, she was not too terribly surprised to find her husband and brother-in-law peacefully asleep in the marriage bed, nor did it upset her. Incest, after all, was practically a tradition among the good families.

FINIS


End file.
